“How many times do I have to tell that I don’t work at the Central Bank?” He would scream into my ear everytime I called him and, instead of him checking on how his daughter was doing, he would start lecturing me on anything, and everything. On such days I always wished that I would get myself back home and poison his food. But that would give him a more than decent, painless and immediate ticket to hell.
With the pregnancy no longer getting on the way of my young life, and having been showed matching orders from my part-time job, starvation had come back banging at the door.
Like Esau who had to sell his birthright to his younger brother Jacob for a bowl of soup, or like the Prodigal son who returned back home to have a nice home cooked meal, or simply like a homeless beggar opts to commit a petty crime on the streets so that he can be locked up behind bars where there is free food and housing, I too picked up my rags over the weekend and headed back home.
It would annoy my father to see me waste money on transport, but it would annoy him even more were his mother and his friends to comment about how malnourished I had become, which was my intention. My people strongly believe that it is far much better for a man to fail to meet his wife’s sexual needs in bed, than for him to fail in putting a bowl of food on the table for his children.
My sisters as usual are excited to see me, the only girl to have left the countryside and travelled to the big city in search of knowledge and wisdom. To them, it is obvious that I will get married to a wealthy, handsome and well educated man, hence give them the right to crash into my new home whenever they felt like it, with an excuse of helping around, when in reality they will be inventing moves to woo my husband’s rich friends and relatives.
I love my sisters, but I love my privacy more. This is why I can’t stand having to share a room with them, listen to them gossip about some village boys they have a crush on, and how they lied about attending the church choir or Bible Study when they were actually meeting up with boys by the roadside bushes to practice with what they watch Mexican actors and actresses do, or what they have read from Mills and Boon.
I ask them to hush repeatedly, and they only do so for a couple of minutes before going back to their same old boring storytelling, everytime trying to change the topic so that I may join in, only for me to hush them again.
“Hey Neema, what’s up with you today? You are acting like a pregnant woman!” Comments Soni in a fairly loud whisper before they both start giggling.
“Since when did you become an expert on pregnant women?” I angrily shout back at her in a louder whisper, secretly praying that my father’s ears have become deaf so as not to hear what we are talking about.
“So you are pregnant? Who’s the father? Are you getting married? Where does he come from? Is he rich?” Ciku excitedly asks. Amidst the big cloud of darkness I can see her sit up with her mouth wide open with excitement. Why do her teeth have to be so white when she barely takes a minute to brush them?
“Ciku! Stop it; can’t you tell that she is on her period?” Shouts Soni.
Later I hear them have a pillow talk till they hypnotise each other to sleep. They seem to be getting closer to each other by the day. Just a few years back, they could hardly stand each other, but now, they are acting more like lovers. I hope they haven’t been doing any of that lesbian stuff girls in single sex boarding schools do. Not that I mind it, for it would be a lot better to be with another female than live a abnormal life with a man who’ll remind them of their father.
Come the next morning, I am awaken by my father knocking hard on our door, almost breaking it down as he shouts at my sisters to go and study. I remember back when I was still in school; primary and high school. Vacation or no vacation, he always had me strictly supervised, with a timetable waiting for me the very minute I reached home after the schools closed. I used to have terrible headaches then; I barely had enough sleep, or enough of anything. It feels just like yesterday when he would threaten to come wake me up with a whip. As soon as I started my university education, I found out that after all this early morning study sessions, I hadn't been born to be an early morning person. My mind works best from the late afternoon hours all the way to a little past midnight. Hopefully, I will get a job that will also allow me to work the afternoon or night shift.
After he makes sure that the two female slaves are settled in their study room, he comes back, with more bangs; lecturing me on how foolish I am to be asleep when my old mother is already up and killing herself with house chores. I've always wondered why is it that I being a woman have to do the kitchen and house work while he sits around doing nothing. It’s not like I do the cleaning, cooking and washing with my breasts or my vagina!
There were those days when I thought to myself that God had made a mistake; that He should have let him be physically challenged. That way, I would have no problem doing everything while he sat there, controlling the remote, making orders and Hitlering the running of the entire household. I read that a majority of well famed dictators are like this because they were born with only one testicle. Could he be one of them?
Though I had planned to stick around for a while, the man can’t seem to stand my presence in the house. He tells me that he doesn’t want me to miss a single class. He says that I should leave for school latest by noon. I make a wild guess that he doesn’t want anyone to see how thin I have become, and they may start talking; talking about how I may have fallen prey of the city men along the well famed prostitution cum Koinange Street.
Before he has his wish, he has to fulfil mine. That’s when I introduce the taboo topic which has brought me home; money.
“Money, money, everything is about money. What do you think I am, Bill Gates? If you want money, you have to work for it.” He starts fussing long before I finish introducing the topic. This is the same man who used to tell me that I need focus on nothing else but my education, for he would take care of everything else.
Like a zombie, I stay there. Glued. Motionless.
He sighs.
“Mhm, what do you do with all the money I send, drugs? Or do you have a family you’re feeding that I know nothing about?”
Mother joins us, and like me, she remains there, like a just resuscitated zombie. Sitted, sipping her cup of coffee, saying nothing.
“I am already late on rent, I have completely run out of shopping, and this being my final year, I need more money to work on my final project. And I also need to start sending applications for my industrial attachment.” I tell him.
He looks at me, unconvinced, for a whole two minutes, and then diverts his misogynist look at my mother.
“See what you have done to your daughter?”
This isn't new to me. It happens every time he's furious with me, for no reason, such that he opts to disown me and let me be my mother's child, and no longer his first-born daughter.
Two more minutes of total silence, then he unleashes his ugly sarcastic laugh.
“Now that you have gone to University you think you are smarter than me, and I am nothing but a stupid old man? If I am as stupid as you think I am, don’t you think you inherited the same amount of stupidity from me?”
Another two minutes of silence.
“Listen, I don’t have time for your stupid games. If you want me to trust you, you will have to send me the receipts of all the print outs you make, the food you buy, the rent you pay and any other thing you spend my money on. In regards to your attachment, I’ll be the one to take care of that. Go get ready for school.”
There is something sinister about this man. I mean, does he think that I don’t have a brain of my own, or does he assume that it’s too shallow to make its own decisions? Maybe he assumes that some-way in between, he took advantage of an IPO I ignorantly made available and purchased 51% of its shares making him my brain's main shareholder. Not a day passes before I try to come up with an explanation why mama has had to stick with him all this while,
or why she got together with him in the first place. Love may be blind, or even insane, but this, this relationship of theirs is absolutely absurd.
Later in the day while he is gone, everyone gets back to life. Without his presence, this house becomes a home, every piece of food no matter how small becomes a meal, and my mama, sisters and I finally become a family. Why can’t things be always like this?
I’m thinking about talking my family into borrowing a leaf from the Kikuyu women from Kiambu. The women are notoriously known for their beauty, charm and love for money. Out of their love for a good life, most of them make it their project to join forces with their kids and eliminate the man of the house. I however doubt if mama would ever let me talk her into it.
I like seeing mama happy, smiling. I have no idea how she laughs though. She is a beautiful woman, and I have occasionally caught several men look at her, men young enough to be her nephews, and others old enough to be her father. One day I will make her laugh; and that will be the happiest moment of my life.
It's a few minutes' past 2:00pm. Mama asks why I am disrespecting papa’s request. I tell her that was no request; it’s was a command. My sisters laugh. Since I am all grown up and smart, I no longer have to shake when he speaks. Shouldn’t he start thinking about the future? Being the angry man he has always been, age has already started catching up with him, really fast! If he doesn’t change his ways, soon he will have no one to look after him, or even someone to send him to a prison-like retirement home where kids who hate their parents send them as a payback.
I am not stupid though. I have had enough of him already, and can't stand another night under his roof, or having to hear his voice penetrate my ears. The sound of his voice is more annoying than that of a mosquito singing and dancing around your ear when you're trying to catch sleep. If I start getting ready now, I will be done by around three o'clock, and can spare a couple of minutes for mama to say a prayer for me as I leave. By four o'clock I'll be in the matatu and come eight o'clock, I'll have arrived in college.
As I stand to go back to the house and follow my well laid plan, I realise that everything around me has suddenly become blurry, and so is my hearing, and my stability, then my consciousness.
Never felt so much peace, serenity and happiness in life. If death feels like this, and I believe it is, I have no idea why so many are scared of dying, and freeze everytime one tries to bring up the topic.
I have taken a peep on the other side a number of times before, and being on the border proved to me how lovely that place is.
My younger sister at first assumes that I have died, so mama comes to confirm whether the daughter that she has always loved, but never had the words to express how much she loved her is really gone. Slowly by slowly, I start coming back. I must have reached the other side past the office working hours and had to be deferred till the next intake.
As Soni struggles to resuscitate me, mama is in tears, dialling her phone, calling out for neighbours and weeping while hugging my body tightly close to hers. If this is what it takes to feel that warm hug that I have always longed for, then this should be happening more often.
By the time I gain full consciousness, word has already spread far and wide that I am dead. I in fact wouldn't be surprised if a couple of months or even years down the line, someone got a shock of their life upon seeing my ghost taking walks on the streets.
Father is dead worried; I have never seen him this scared. He must have started counting the losses of educating this girl, and end up losing her before gold digging a handsome amount of dowry and bride price from his future son-in-law.
Mama insists that I should seek medical attention, but I am against it, so is papa. This is the first and only time that we've actually agreed on something.
“It doesn’t seem that serious to me. Let her get checked tomorrow after she goes back to school. We can’t afford to pay for her check-up here when we have already paid for another at her school.” He says.
As I go to bed, all I am thinking about is, 'What If'.
What if it is something serious? Did it have to do with my miscarriage? What will the doctor say?
I wake up earlier than usual, but to my surprise, there is no wake up banging at the door. The big man must have been scared from yesterday's episode to an extent that he leaves mama to wake up the lazy girls. Her style is different, patient, but all the same worse. At first she will come in, softly call out your name as she gives you a tender facial massage. If you don't respond to that, she returns with a more aggressive approach; pinching your feet. If at all you resist that one too, she will get rid of all the blankets, hide them, and open the windows.
As Soni and Ciku try in vain to catch an extra minute of sleep, mama approaches my bed and informs me that father wants to see and talk to me. What happened to the old saying, mwenye haja huenda choo?
I tell her that I will be right up, but she doesn't seem satisfied. She demands that I first get out of bed, which I refuse as I instead turn to the opposite side of the bed and cover my whole body with a blanket.
“Wake up; you know your father doesn’t like to be kept waiting.” She demands as she takes away the only blanket I'm covering myself with and drops it on the floor. I give up. I turn to the other side of the bed and sit up.
I notice Soni and Ciku stare at me, a stare I have never seen before. Mama looks embarrassed. She looks away, and then down before asking my sisters to leave the room. I look back at her, worried, not knowing what is going on.
“What have you done?” She angrily asks as soon as the door shuts behind Ciku’s back.
“What are you talking about…?” She doesn’t let me finish. She slaps me hard across my face, a chilly and sharp slap on a freezing cold morning.
“Is this why you were refusing to go back to school? Oh my God, where did I go wrong?” She starts wailing, pacing about the room. Father calls out for her,
“Mama Neema, are you planning on burning down my house or what?”
She stares at me with very infuriated eyes before leaving. Those aren’t her eyes; she must have contracted the disorder from father.
After she leaves, I take a good look at myself and just like a balloon that has been puffed in with air, is my protruding belly. I don’t know how and why the thing had to pop up at a moment like this, when just yesterday it was as flat as young girl’s bare chest.
Maybe it had always been there, but I had gotten so used to sucking in my stomach that I had failed to see it grow.
“How are you feeling?” Mama’s sweetheart asks me. I can’t really tell whether he is faking his being concerned, or if he's for real.
“I’m okay.”
“Fine. Go help your mother in the kitchen and then get ready for school. Your mother will accompany you to town and have Dr. Kariuki do a check-up on you. I don’t want you passing out unnecessarily out there on the road all by yourself."
I have no idea what kind of abnormality I am suffering from, but if it has to do with a man, the last person I want to get to know about it is mama. Proving right her suspicions will destroy her, if not kill her.
A part of me is telling me that I am suffering from a complicated pregnancy that should be checked, and if not, then it must be a tumour, or an unknown weird medical condition. I try to convince and re-convince myself that it could be something else, but the more I think about it, the more I start experiencing imaginary baby movements and kicks.
Mama doesn’t say a word to me. Not that she talks much but, I would rather listen to her call me names and lecture me about my having humiliated her rather than keeping those harmful words to herself. She recently lost a dear friend of hers who had also been married to a husband with exactly the same traits as father. Her naivety and submissiveness had paved way to her suffering from a brain tumour, which hungrily fed on all her youth, beauty and womanhood before ditching her into a six feet deep pit. And just like that, t
he mourning widower brought onto her side of the bed another woman the very next evening after the burial ceremony.
It would kill me were mama to follow her friend's footsteps.
I want to make her proud of me, and help her get back her voice, her strength, her endurance, and her dreams.
As I walk to the clinic's washrooms, I feel that I have to act now, and that I need to do something that will bring back to life the strong woman whose personality has been sapped by the man she loved, and the daughters her husband wished had been born male.
I meet this charming cleaning lady in the washrooms going about her tasks. She tells me her name is Ann. I ask her if she is pregnant. She is taken aback at my allegations.
“What makes you think that? I just gave birth a few months ago!”
I beg her to help me out, promising to give her the little money I have with me in exchange of a little sample of her urine. I would rather go hungry for yet another day, and maybe another night, than send mama back home in fear and depression.
The lady must have once been in my shoes. She takes a look at me, then another, and a final one before obliging to my request. As I continue to grow up, I have come to learn that not many women are as outspoken as they should be. The speak best with their inner voices, and if you have never had that inner voice, you can never get to communicate with them or understand them. That inner voice is great, for it helps you connect with each other, but it so bad, that it makes other people take advantage of you.
The results come out negative. Mama is so happy, she's smiling! It's like the tallest wave of bad karma has been swept off her entire lineage. The woman is so lovely, so radiant and beautiful with that smile on. In no time, she gets back to her serious self, and scared as she reverts her attention to the doctor.
“Could this mean that it’s something else, maybe something more serious?”
“No, I highly doubt that." The doctor responds. "Your daughter just told me that she had her period a few days back. The fainting could have been as a result of too much blood loss, especially if she had a heavy flow; it's quite a common occurrence among girls her age. Same thing with her tummy; nothing serious, just a bloated stomach. But since we can’t speculate, I would advice that she comes back for another check-up after a week.”